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Aren't I a Woman: Celebrating as Black and Female

© Dorothy Harris

In 1848, Sojourner Truth attended the women's rights convention that was held in Seneca Falls, New York. As an American woman of African descent who fought all of her adult life for the rights of enslaved Africans in America, she wanted to be part of this movement that was also fighting for the rights of women. Her appearance at the confention and her speech (which became the famous Ain't I a Woman speech) was indicative of the need for African American women to place themselves in a movement that excluded them, even though they were women. It was made clear, even with Truth's reception, that there was an implied difference between the struggle of blacks in American and the struggles for women. And it was clear that the only women in consideration for the suffragists were white women. But where does someone like Truth make such a distinction? Where do black women separate being black from being women? These questions were raised over and over again by African American women throughout history. For Truth was certainly not the first woman to ask this question, and I will certainly not be the last.

By the late 1970's, as the women's studies movement was gaining ground, black women scholars continued to raise the same question that was raised by Truth over a hundred years before them. Titles that reflected this began showing on the shelves. Truth's title, Ain't I a woman regained popularity during this time as African American women continued the struggle to assert the inability to separate who we are as blacks and who we are as women in this country's struggles. In 1982, Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith edited an anthology on Black Women's Studies entitled All The Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. Black women were stating what should have been obvious, but was apparently not obvious to enough people. The movements which were designed out of the need of people who were marginalized, people whose forums include issues that are also our issues, that the movements that we helped form excluded issues of women of color. As our foremothers reminded themselves in the 19th century, no one can speak best for the African American women than the African American women themselves.

A couple of weeks ago in class I asked the question, in a rhetorical manner, "Can we separate being black from being women?" I was surprised to see students across the classroom nodding their heads in the affirmative. When I asked further, I found that some of the students, even some of the black women, found it necessary at times to separate, or try to separate the two. When we continued the discussion, and I shared with them that many women have challenged that notion for hundreds of years, I found they felt (especially the black students) that they had been expected to make such separation, and did not realize that it was okay to challenge such.

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